Gandi.net

Been with Gandi about 2 years now for domain name hosting and email and haven't had any issues. I love their ethos no bulls**t which they seem to live up to.

Gandi is a domain registrar with good reputation. Their interface & DNS are fast, responsive, and easy to use.

But Gandi has been acquired by a private equity firm in 2019, and later sold to Total Webhosting Solutions. Since then, they've cut the 2 free mailboxes. I've also noticed the steady price hikes in recent years.

Now, the cost for "big 3" TLD domains (.com .net and .org) have just been quietly bumped up from $29 to $39/yr. That's more than double the price of other registrars, and that's not counting the discount ones that sell at cost.

Gandi used to be proud of how they don't push upsells, sneak in unwanted services, or selling what should've been included. Gandi famously opposed registrars like GoDaddy for utilizing those "bullshit" practices, but with Gandi prices now sky-high, the final price I pay at Gandi aren't that different from those competitors who use underhanded tactics to sneakily make people pay more than they should.

I'm not sure how long the "no bullshit" promise will last. There will come a point where they can't increase prices any higher (everyone would leave Gandi if it's $100 for a domain), and they'd have to push you pay for additional services if they want to continue on this trajectory.

Unfortunately it seems like there's no one who "took their torch" All other registrars have a combination of bad reputation, shutting people down randomly or due to political disagreements, or operate a domain auction/marketplace.

Good UI/UX and really like their "no bullshit" promise.

Very cheap, includes free email inbox, is committed to and supports open source software, digital freedom and privacy.

Was with Go Daddy for a long time, mostly because buy a domain, get to set up a free website page. Which was cool for a couple of the domains I purchased. Than the free website with domain purchase stopped.

Came across Gandi one day about a couple of years ago. They had the buy a domain get a free website page.

Purchased one domain and was able to setup a website page for free.
Few months later, purchased another domain and and was able to setup a website page for free.

When it came time to renew the first domain for another year, I paid the one year fee... but come to find out the free website page was no longer available. To have a website to go with the domain, it will now cost so much per month (or yearly) to have a website to go with my domains.

Wish I would of known ahead of time that the free website was not available any more. I could of shopped around and look for a different website domain company.

They five you the possibility to tweak everything on your domain. No matter if MX, TXT, subdomains, or other DNS Settings, it's all up to you to create and change. Your in full control (beware)!